UP FRONT
A Plague of Desecration
Jewish cemeteries in Israel and France have come
under attack by unknown forces. Authorities
suspect anti-Semitic groups or Jewish extremists.
STAFF REPORT
T
he desecration of five
Jewish cemeteries in
little more than a
week has united much of
France against bigotry and
anti-Semitism while increas-
ing the tension between
Arabs and Jews in Haifa.
Between 100,000 and
250,000 people, including
French President Francois
Mitterrand and Prime Min-
ister Michel Rocard, march-
ed through the center of
Paris Monday in solidarity
with French Jews. About
1,000 people had marched
Friday in Carpentras and
10,000 others gathered Sun-
day at the southern French
town of 26,000 where van-
dals had overturned 34
headstones and exhumed
and mutilated a recently
buried corpse.
In Haifa, after more than
300 headstones in two
cemeteries were defaced
with slogans calling for the
destruction of the Jews and
the establishment of a Pales-
tinian state, local leaders
pleaded for residents to
refrain from retaliation.
"We will not allow this
barbaric act to harm the
good and harmonious rela-
tions that exist between
Jews and Arabs in Haifa,"
said Aryeh Gurel, the city's
mayor.
But Rehavam Ze'evi,
The slogans on the
Haifa headstones
written in perfect
Hebrew urged
Arabs to "burn, kill
and exterminate
the Jews."
leader of the far right-wing
Moledet faction, said the an-
swer to the desecration in
Carpentras . should be the
immigration of all French
Jews to Israel. And the an-
swer to the Haifa desecra-
tions should be the expulsion
of all Arabs from Israel.
In Israel, a deranged Or-
thodox Jew and his mentally
aberrant friend were detain-
ed for the May 12 assaults on
the Hof Carmel and Kfar
Samir cemeteries in Haifa.
But on Tuesday, several
gravestones in the ancient
Jewish cemetery on the
Mount of Olives in
Jerusalem were found
daubed with swastikas and
Stars of David. Previous at-
tacks on the centuries-old
burial ground have been at-
tributed to Palestinian na-
tionalists.
Police have not eliminated
the possibility that the Pa-
lestinian uprising motivated
the assaults on the Haifa
cemeteries. But the prime
suspect remains David
Goldner, a 42-year-old resi-
dent of Kiryat Motzkin in
the Haifa Bay area described
as a ba'al teshuvah, or
returnee to Orthodox
Judaism.
He says he is a student of
Kabbalistic mysticism, and
claims to be an "emissary of
the Messiah," who he says
has been reborn and is living
in northern Israel.
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Moshe Ran weeps over the desecrated Haifa grave of his son Avi,
Israel's national soccer team goalie who died in 1987.
Goldner has been in trou-
ble with the police previous-
ly for attacking his wife and
threatening his parents. In
both cases, psychiatric ex-
aminations found him fit to
stand trial. He will undergo
further tests.
The slogans on the
headstones written in
perfect Hebrew urged Arabs,
including President Hosni
Mubarak of Egypt and Pres-
ident Hafez Assad of Syria,
to "burn, kill and exter-
minate the Jews." Police
suggested that the Haifa in-
cidents might have been a
copycat response to the at-
tack on the Carpentras
cemetery.
On Tuesday, Goldner
pleaded not guilty to the
charges of desecrating the
Haifa cemeteries and offered
to give the magistrate
lessons in Kabbalah.
The second suspect was
identified as a 32-year-old
resident of Kiryat Yam on
Haifa Bay and a friend of
Goldner's. The two men
have frequented the
Continued on Page 10
Is Eichmann Aide
Living In Syria?
New Babel Works
Appear In Russian
Washington, D.C. — Nazi
mass murderer Alois
Bruner, Adolph Eichmann's
chief executioner, is alive
and well and living under
the protection of the Syrian
government, according to a
report in the June Reader's
Digest.
Peter Michelmore writes
that Bruner lives under
armed guard in a Damascus
apartment building. The
Syrian government not only
knows his whereabouts, but
supports him with a monthly
pension check, Michelmore
says.
The Syrians deny any
knowledge of Bruner's exis-
tence.
"Their hope is that he will
soon go to his grave, his
story untold," Michelmore's
article states. But the truth
is that "Syria is harboring
the most monstrous Nazi
war criminal still alive and
at large," a man "directly
responsible for sending more
than 140,000 Jews to their
deaths."
Ann Arbor — Ardis
Publishers of Aim Arbor has
published in the original
Russian a previously
unknown collection of works
by Soviet Jewish author
Isaac Babel.
Petersburg 1918 was col-
lected and edited by Dr.
Ephraim Sicher of Ben-
Gurion University's Center
for Russian Studies. The
book focuses on the difficult
life in Petersburg (now Len-
ingrad) after the Bolshevik
Revolution, and includes
Babel's incomplete work The
Jewess, a story about the
dissolution of the Jewish
community in the Russian
Pale of Settlement.
Babel, author of Red
Cavalry and Odessa Tales,
was unable to complete and
publish Petersburg 1918 be-
cause of increased repression
in the Stalinist period. He
was executed by Stalin
agents in 1940.
ROUND UP
U-M Event Marks
1492 Expulsion
Ann Arbor — Fourteen-
ninety-two was a year of
discovery and torment. It
was the year Christopher
Columbus began his first
voyage to the New World
and the year the Jews were
expelled from Spain.
Beginning October 1991,
the University of Michigan
will mark the 500th an-
niversary of the expulsion
with a series of concerts,
discussions, exhibits and lec-
tures. Called "Jews and the
Encounter with the New
World," the program will be
held in Ann Arbor, Detroit,
Flint, Grand Rapids and
Kalamazoo
Columbus' voyages to the
New World would have been
impossible without the con-
tributions of Jewish scien-
tists, inventors and finan-
ciers, according to U-M
researcher Judith Laikin
Elkin, who is organizing the
event. Yet Spain's Christian
rulers expelled many of
these same Jews in 1492 and
refused to let them par-
.
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A map from the "Jews and the
Encounter with the New World"
exhibit.
ticipate in the conquest and
settlement of the New
World.
A Real Mouthful
Of Alphabet Soup
New York — In the begin-
ning it was the Jewish Wel-
fare Board. Then it was just
plain JWB. Now it's the
Jewish Community Centers
Association of North
America, or JCC Associ-
ation. A new name, a new
acronym.
Late last month, delegates
to the 1990 JWB Biennial
voted to change the name
JWB to Jewish Community
Centers Association of North
America.
"By adopting this new
name, this organization has
publicly aligned itself with
the Jewish Community
Center movement," said
new JCC Association Presi-
dent Lester Pollack of New
York. "It is a major step to
have taken, and it is more
than semantics."
JTS, JPS, JVS, JF&CS,
UHS, JPI, ORT, BBYO,
USA, ADL, JCC, JFS, BIAS,
NCSY, UCSJ, JTA, NCJW,
YMHA, YU, AJC, UJA,
CLAL, CAJE, JLC, AJPA,
NCSJ, NFTY, ARZA, LZA,
AIPAC, JWV, UOJC, JARC,
HUC-JIR, CJF, WJC, SSSJ,
NJCRAC, ZOA, JNF,
CCAR, YI, RCA, AMIT, IDF,
JESNA, VIVO, AAEJ, WZO,
JBI, JDC, JCC Association
— do you know what they all
mean?
And think — this is just
the beginning! Could more
organizations with more
acronyms be just around the
corner? Stay tuned to the
Round-Up .. .
Compiled by
Elizabeth Applebaum
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS
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